“To become a monster like your son?”
“I’m getting tired of your sarcasm.” His voice was suddenly harsh. “I knew you wouldn’t understand Kevin.”
“Then why did you try to explain him to me? Did you want absolution for what you did to help him?”
“Absolution? No.” He got to his feet. “I told you, I’m proud to be his father, proud of everything I did to help him.” His voice lowered to silky softness. “I told you because Kevin wanted you to know. I feel it. He doesn’t like it that you don’t fear him. You know he’s here, but you’re strong enough to resist him, like the other one.”
“What other one?” she whispered.
“You know.”
Bonnie.
I’m fighting to keep him away, but he’s getting stronger.
“Well, you’ve told me, and I’m still not afraid of him.” But she was struggling to keep her voice from shaking from the shock she was feeling. “Do you know they made fun of Hitler during World War II? He was a monster, but get beyond that ugliness, and he was only a cruel little man who was easy to ridicule.”
“Oh, that was another age. Kevin agreed with you. He admired Hitler, but he was also critical. He told me that manipulating al-Qaeda and the terrorist groups was the way to go. He was already making great strides insinuating himself into a group in Pakistan by feeding them information, when those Army bastards caught him and threw him into jail.”
“Too bad it wasn’t the al-Qaeda. They would have played with him a long time before they killed him.”
Doane looked as if she’d struck him. “Bitch.” His hands balled into fists at his sides. “You’ll pay for that.” He drew a deep breath. “I’ve got to get out of here for a while, or I’ll beat you until you can’t sit upright on that stool. Kevin wouldn’t like that. He has such fine plans for you.”
For the first time, Doane’s mask was slipping. Push him a little more. “He has no plans. He’s dead and gone, Doane.”
“Is he?” He was striding toward the front door. “He’s not gone to me. I’m not gone to him. Sometimes I feel him near me just like when he was alive. I even dream about him. If he’s gone, then why do I feel he has plans for you and your Bonnie?” He paused at the door. “Keep on working. If you don’t have more done when I come back, I’ll call Blick and have a talk with him about Jane MacGuire.” The door slammed behind him.
Eve straightened on the stool. Get control. The gloves were off, and it might be better that way. She had goaded Doane until he had jettisoned all the games he’d been playing. Now they were out in the open and face-to-face.
Not quite. There were still blanks to be filled in, but that could come later. Doane was no longer pretending to be the warm, fatherly guy next door. It had been bizarre and horrible watching his expressions change and twist. The man who had strode out of here had been completely different from the mask he had worn since she had met him.
“I’ve got you. I can see you, Doane,” she whispered. “And I’ll learn how to manipulate you just the way your dear Kevin did. Neither one of you is going to beat us.”
Us. The word had come naturally, instinctively. Had she been referring to Jane or Joe?
Or Bonnie.
She felt a wave of nausea abruptly wash over her, and she had to grab hard at the wood of the worktable to keep from falling off the stool.
Not the gas. Not the gas. Not the gas. Bonnie’s words flying back to her.
Her gaze was blurry as she stared at the face of the reconstruction. Kevin’s face.
She could feel it pulling her, smothering her.
Things that do go bump in the night. He’s so strong, Mama.
We’ll beat him, baby.
But not by sitting here right now. Doane had given her an opportunity, and she had to take it.
The desk. The locked drawer.
She shook her head to clear it, then reached for the steel spatula she’d been using to smooth the clay. It had no sharp edges she could use to pick the lock, but it was fine steel and might be strong enough to pry the drawer open. It didn’t matter any longer that Doane remain ignorant that she was trying to rifle the desk. The conflict between them was now stark and without subterfuge on either side.
Move.
She slipped down from the stool and ran across the room toward the desk.
Damn, her knees were weak.
And she could feel a tension in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades.
As if someone was staring balefully at her.
Imagination.
That blob of clay held no life.
But could it hold death?
Ignore it.
Easy to say. The cords of her neck were so tense she could hardly breathe.
Go away.
She closed her mind and concentrated as she inserted the spatula in the opening of the drawer.
She carefully worked it back and forth, chiseling at the soft wood around the lock. The spatula was as strong as she’d hoped. Strong enough?
A sound from outside.
She tensed and listened.
No footstep. No slamming truck door. Just a faint sound that might be Doane’s voice talking on his phone.
Good. It might keep him occupied a little longer. She started working frantically at the drawer.
A moment later, the wood splintered around the lock!
Yes.
She jerked the drawer open.
She stared at the contents of the drawer in shock and disappointment.
An old beat-up photo album?
Memories that warm the heart, Doane had said.
And beneath it was the folded jacket she had worn the morning Doane had taken her.
Where the hell was her phone and her gun?
She lifted the tan album out of the drawer and tossed it on the top of the desk. Why was it so faded and well thumbed? What was inside that album that Doane held so precious that he carried it with him?
Just a quick look …
She opened the heavy leather cover.
Not a quick look, she realized in shock.
Because her gaze was caught and held by a yellowed newspaper front page. She didn’t understand German, but she could make out that it was a Hamburg, Germany, newspaper. And the photos on the front page told their own story. Children. Little girls of seven or eight or nine. Victims. She had seen headlines in Atlanta and Chicago and dozens of other local papers that were tragically similar.
Oh, God.
She wasn’t important, Doane had said.
And these little girls?
Eve closed her eyes for an instant. Get over the horror. No time for it now.
She closed the album shut and threw it on the floor.
She hurriedly started to rifle through the deep drawer. She pulled out her jacket, checked the pockets, then tossed the jacket aside.
The gun. Find the gun.
There it was! She grabbed the .38 and checked the magazine.
Empty. Dammit, of course he’d pulled the magazine clip.
She tossed the gun on the desk and started looking for her phone.
She found it a moment later.
Dead. The batteries in the cell phone had been pulled. Find the batteries. He wouldn’t leave bullets around, but batteries weren’t lethal. She started looking through the other drawers in the desk.
No battery. And she hadn’t had a charger with her.
Shit.
There had to be a way to get power.
She studied the laptop computer that Doane had set up for her. A slender cable connected the mouse with one of the computer’s USB ports. Could that actually work? Only one way to find out.
She ran across the room and pulled the cable from the port and wrapped it around her hands. She dropped the mouse on the floor, stepped on it and yanked with all her might until the cable finally pulled free. She picked up the frayed end and peeled back the insulation until she could see four thin wires, each a different color. Red and black were for power, the others were for data, she thought. Concentrate on the red and black.
She used her teeth to strip away the red and black casings to expose the copper wires. She picked up her phone and squinted at the copper terminals in the battery compartment. There were three, not two. One was probably for the battery capacity gauge, temperature, or some other data. But which was which?